An Account of One’s Insensitivity to Certain Situations

On a walk in late afternoon I encountered a fluttering pulse of aerial disturbance as I regained my bearings and reconnoitered the vicinity a small sharp bird approached me on a second sortie resolved to buzz me and landed on a street sign with its suburban talons clutching the thin metal and its meager tail plumage shifting and readjusting to maintain equilibrium for the grey bird with blue iridescence a plain bird but possessing the light and quick clockwork movements that made it seem unreal or at least unhuman like its eyes that seemed as though they would never blink to cover that fiery brown with fluid coat and upon the blink made all the more unhuman by the rapidity and shutterlike detachment of the action this bird was hollow.

The hollow bird content that I had exceeded the limits of its territory returned as I assumed it would to its tiny nest low in a nearby tree and began as I stood mesmerized by its movement cadence of head side to side from one side to the other quickly so that no intermediate position was apparent like a flicker to preen itself and its nest of twigs and fluff and sticks which it would pull on alternately while pressing its beak like a steam hammer into its feathers at a measured pace until in the haste and automation one twig was removed at the wall of the nest and the wind swaying the tree just right and the kick of the bird’s tiny talon caused a tiny spotted egg to roll and drop from the nest to the ground and break unsalvageable and ruined.

The bird remained on the wall of its nest with its fiery brown eye open taut and its head cocked slightly looking down then straight ahead quickly with no intermediate position between down to the egg and straight to nothing as mechanically its eye blinked and its head cocked slightly to the opposite side and returned with no apparent intermediate position.


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